1. Field of the Invention.
This invention relates to printers, and more particularly, to reciprocating shuttles for such printers.
2. Description of Related Art.
Printing or plotter heads are often moved in a reciprocating motion in order to print a line of characters on a sheet of workpiece paper. Various types of printing heads have been so employed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,951,051 to Barrus, et al., 4,180,766 to Matula, 4,239,403 to Matula et al., 4,359,289 to Barrus and Japanese Patent Publications Nos. 57-93166 and 58-89378, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
In some of the previous printer devices, a reciprocating shuttle carriage which supports the printing head is driven by very high drive forces relative to the printer frame. The frames of such printers generally have massive components to accommodate such drive forces but nonetheless tend to vibrate during operation. Prior drive mechanisms often use tight linkage systems which have been found to transmit much of the oscillatory force to the printer frame. Furthermore, designers of many prior printers have attempted to overcome non-resonant oscillating forces by using a considerably larger opposing force, which has often compounded the vibrational force exerted on the machine frame.
The additional extraneous forces often present with prior devices can significantly increase the amount of acceleration on the printheads. This is particularly true if the shuttle stroke is relatively short because more oscillations per line printed are often required with short stroke shuttles. It has been found that high acceleration can interfere with the proper operation of the ink supply.